Whoa !! Silver Coins Held Captive !!

Hacksaw-BoB · Feb 19, 2021

OK . . . In the late 1960-70s in San Diego, CA I was an avid metal detector hobbyist !!
I am not so active anymore but I cannot wait to introduce my grandkids to this wonderful hobby.
So way back then, there were better odds of finding silver coins with a MD (Rayscope 27T).
I thought it would be “COOL” to clean the silver coins I was finding and then place them in this
Corning glass block sample bank. The glass bank got pretty full quickly and would not take
any more coins. Now it is a paper weight on my desk and the silver coins are held captive !!

So, I found out the Corning glass bank itself empty weight is 227 grams, the bank with silver
coins weighs 768 grams so there is about 541 grams of silver coins in the bank.
Doing the math, there is a little over a pound of silver coins locked up in the glass bank and YES,
it does make a nice paper weight ! ! ! Any idea what the value of the coins in the bank are worth ? ? ?

partyofone · Feb 19, 2021

$426.58

diggin4clad · Feb 19, 2021

Roughly 18-19 times the face value.

Diggum · Feb 19, 2021

It's impossible to know, without reviewing each coin. You could have coins in there that are worth tens or hundreds of dollars each (depending on condition and rarity).

The best thing to do is sell them all to me at face value, and then I can review them and tell you how much I rooked you for. :laughing:

IDXMonster · Feb 19, 2021

If they are not worth the effort to sell individually and you are looking at the melt value, you HAVE to do it by WEIGHT. Silver coins wear easily and ones that have seen heavy circulation can lose as much as 10% of their mass, or more. So you are going at it the right way, by considering the weight. Google search “Silver scrap calculator” and you can input the values. Remember that a regular “ounce” is 28.34xxxx grams.
Current melt is 86 cents a gram so you have 417.00 in melt value. I believe the above figure might’ve been miscalculated using TROY ounces...

Hacksaw-BoB · Feb 21, 2021

Interesting replies so far !! Thanks !! At that time period, I was also a coin collector.
So, although there are several older Walking Liberty halves and Mercury dimes
in the glass bank, I know for sure, they are all common date silver coins !!

Tom_in_CA · Feb 21, 2021

Hacksaw-BoB said:
....
So way back then, there were better odds of finding silver coins with a MD (Rayscope 27T).....

I liked your recollection of those early vintage days. Yes, detectors were in-their infancy EVEN UP TO THE LATE '60s / early '70s. In-so-far as ability on individual coins went.

I have one of those Rayscopes here, that I picked up as a curiosity item at a flea market years ago. Seems like they were capable of getting individual coins (versus larger-objects-only).

Hacksaw-BoB · Feb 21, 2021

Hi Tom, YES, that Rayscope 27T MD was so great to use back then.
It was a new type, transistorized using the inductance balance technology.
It would easily find coins up to 4-5 inches deep and pin point the
target within a square inch inside the Rayscope rectangle decal
on the search coil. Sweet !!

Whoa !! Silver Coins Held Captive !!

Hacksaw-BoB

partyofone

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diggin4clad

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Diggum

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IDXMonster

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Hacksaw-BoB

Tom_in_CA

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Hacksaw-BoB

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